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Why Some Christians Reject Evolution

Connor Wood has an interesting essay on his belief in why some religious people reject evolutionary theory. It’s an interesting take, and I think there’s some truth to it. Wood claims that religious people reject evolution because, basically, natural selection is viscerally unsettling.

Once you start looking at evolutionary reasons for human behavior, you very quickly run aground on some very uncomfortable ideas. These can be summed up in a simple formula: we are not here to love one another. We are here to spread our genes.

This means that, whatever aspirations we have, whatever loves we think we cherish, whirring beneath the entire mechanism of human social life is a bleak drive to win life’s game. This, in turn, implies that there all of life is ranked in order of how successful it is at this game.

While I think that there might be some merit to this idea, I think one major fault of Wood’s thesis is that he didn’t bother to actually unpack and examine it. He himself admits that “[i]nstead of citing historical examples or quoting famous writers, I’ll use a personal story to show why.” From there, he extrapolates the viewpoints of the religious from his own perspective in grappling with the implications of evolution.

That’s not a particularly rigorous way to go about it. Wood’s essay is worth reading on its own merit, because it has some very good thoughts in there about the role of religion in social life as a kind of stop gap against the cruelties of evolution. But as a matter of explanation, I think it’s barking up the wrong tree. The reasons for why different people reject evolution, particularly within the context of different religious traditions, are complicated. But for Christianity, the root of why so many people have trouble with evolution goes back to some very basic aspects of theology. Namely, the doctrines of Original Sin and Salvation.

Let’s take a trip back to the late 4th and early 5th Centuries A.D. The Christian Church is now the official religion of the Roman Empire, many of its early doctrinal struggles were settled at the Council of Nicea, and the Church itself had a mighty philosopher in the form of Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, who had successfully waged a theological battle against the Donatist heresy, among others.

Before Augustine could rest on his laurels, he had a new challenger – a lay monk by the name of Pelagius. Pelagius (probably) came from the relatively young Church in the British Isles, and when he arrived in Rome he was more than little shocked to see that the Christians closest to Rome weren’t living in the way he thought Christ taught. Himself a rather ruthless ascetic, Pelagius taught that Christ’s life provided an ultimate example of a sinless life. A sinless life that, he believed, all people were capable of. For Pelagius, salvation was a matter of both will and the practice of good works.

For Pelagius, the grace of God assisted people in performing good works, if they chose to accept it. Christ’s death, in Pelagius’ view, served as something of a pardon for those who believed in him and were willing to turn their lives around. But for Pelagius, a Jew who faithfully followed the Mosaic Law, or even a pagan who lived a virtuous life were capable of being saved on their own merits. Being a Christian made it easier, but no impossible to be saved.

Augustine and his frequent theological partner, St. Jerome, had some fundamental problems with Pelagius’ theology, and through their writings, they build on the writings of earlier Church Fathers to develop what we today know to be the Doctrine of Original Sin. In Augustine’s view – a view that, more or less, remains a vital part of most Christian Churches today – when Adam disobeyed God and ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, his sin implicated all of Mankind. This Original Sin means that everyone – not just Adam – is doomed to damnation.

For Augustine and, for the most part, all of Western Christian orthodoxy, Jesus Christ’s death was seen as a sacrifice that nullifed Original Sin. But only if that sacrifice is accepted by a Christian through the process of Baptism and the Sacraments. The extent to how much influence this choice has over one’s Salvation is a matter of great doctrinal contention, with probably its most extreme version being Calvinism, which holds that God foreordained who would be saved and who would be damned. (The Eastern Orthodox Churches, however, never held to this formulation of Original Sin.)

I’m compressing several books worth of theology into a few paragraphs, I know, but this summary should get to the heart of the problem. For some Christians, evolution would, if true, completely shatter the doctrine of Original Sin. After all, if humans evolved, then there wasn’t an Adam, there wasn’t a Garden of Eden, and there wasn’t a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If that’s the case, these Christians believe, then there wasn’t a Fall and there wasn’t a reason for Christ to be crucified. Thus, in their minds, evolution is completely incompatible with Christian teachings.

This obviously isn’t a universal view. The Catholic Church accepts evolution and Original Sin by interpreting the Fall as described in Genesis as a figurative event. Other denominations have worked evolution into their theologies in different ways, ranging from a basic acceptance of the Catholic view all the way to rejecting the doctrine of Original Sin completely.

The bottom line, though, is that for many Christians, evolution isn’t a minor fact of science that can be resolved into the mythos of their faith. It is, rather, a fundamental attack on their faith and many things that they believe. That’s why this discussion can often become incredibly heated and emotional. I think it’s important to understand this so that there can be a fruitful dialogue in this area of science and theology.

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Seriously. I’m not as convinced as I used to be about the Catholic Church’s acceptance of evolution, Alex. At the official level, the Vatican makes diplomatic statements about the compatibility of religion and science. But the more you study the history, the more you realize the acceptance is based on a very loose interpretation of evolutionary theory. “Change over time” is acceptable. Natural selection. Random variation. Genetic drift. Those are another story.

Brett, quite true. (Although I find it worrisome that two of the biggest ID proponents, against evolutionary theory, are both Catholics: Michael Behe and Bruce Chapman, of the creationist-funded Discovery Institute.)

Prove evolution is true: show us a monkey man that is not a hoax. Show us the fossils. Since there are no monkey-men, show us evidence that a new species has evolved from a separate species. Oh, that has never been proven either. Evolution is a belief. Not a scientific factual set of data.

So many springboards attached to so many soapboxes here, but it seems it wouldn’t be hard to say that yes, God created the garden (earth) and then Adam via the slow evolutionary process, but THEN He still did everything else the bible says from that point on. Saying that 8 God days = billions of human years doesn’t seem like it’s going to make any more atheists than a round earth or stationary sun did.

Why the continued anti-science? It may have less to do with how ‘cold’ evolution is compared to how comforting salvation is and more to do with how ‘cold’ atheists seem when using evolution to discredit every single creation story and EVERYTHING attached to it.

I don’t even know if anti-evolution Christians’ reasons are even that sophisticated. I’ve never heard one actually espouse Original Sin as a reason for rejecting evolution (anecdotal, obviously).

For American evangelicals, it’s in my experience usually much simpler: they’ve convinced themselves that a “literal”* view of the Bible (including the origin mythology) is fundamentally tied to the truth of their religion. Either it’s all true, or the whole thing is false, Jesus doesn’t love us, there’s no meaning to life, morality is a lie, etc.

They obviously don’t want to believe the latter, and so they get really, really defensive when questioned on it. This post from a moderate evangelical who believes in evolution describes it better than I can.

* I asterisk-ed “literal” because it’s nothing of the sort. What they call “literal” is usually some random series of evangelical interpretations of the bible going back to the 1920s.

The author makes a valid point here, but the most accurate part of the article is connecting anti-evolution thinking with the fear-based emotions that drive it. But Brett hits on what creates and preserves the vast majority of creationists: logical fallacies and emotions born of fear (insecurity, namely) that reinforce each other. The false dichotomy of ‘all or none’ theology, cherry-picking/wrenching actual evidence out of context, and outright misrepresentation/ignoring of scientific facts are fallacies that are necessary to maintain a belief in ID and help paint evolution as a threat. The hysterical reactions to evolution’s perceived threat whips up such an emotional frenzy within certain sects of Christianity that the reasoning errors are ignored and these intellectually lazy arguments just spread and get louder. This laziness becomes a more sophisticated and reprehensible deception when the creationist is aware of these fallacies, but ignores the bad reasoning and champions the same arguments anyway. Some of the major public Creationist figures are infamous for being called out on something factually incorrect (misquoting, or deliberately citing Darwin out of context to present him as ‘doubting’ natural selection is common), retracting it, and literally moving on to the next town to use the same incorrect statement 24 hours later. And thus, what should be a scientific issue becomes an emotional battle between the false opposites of science and Christianity in the court of public opinion. Not only are these creationists and their behavior/arguments promoting bad science, they’re practicing bad theology and even worse morals. It is the deliberately deceptive few that encourage this nonsense in a larger lazy or ignorant public. The extent to which known facts of biology, geology, history, paleontology, astronomy/cosmology, our scientific understanding of time, and the scientific method itself must be ignored to perpetuate the literal interpretation of a myth is disturbing and appalling. Creationism not only creates unnecessary social conflict–it promotes a way of thinking that is completely incompatible with education.

I agree most give no thought to it and are simply parroting what has been passed down for generations. Its the same reason they believe their particular theistic views, because someone else told them so.

Those that have examined it are coming from a more cynical standpoint I believe. If evolution is true, there was no “first” man, no adam and eve, etc…this hurts the fable and following this original sin is debunked concept (since obviously there was no “original” man), kind of kills their whole theology (along with other large number of fallacies).